Withering Flowers
by Discoabc
Summary: "They're the bad guys," I told him with utter conviction. "Oh? Then what does that make us? The heroes?" I shook my head. "No. We are the ones that will tear it all apart and destroy anything we see until there's nothing left." His lips tugged into one of his diabolical smiles as he leaned towards me. "Quite the villain aren't you?" OC!Insert Antagonist!OC Slight AU Character death
1. Withering Flowers

**Plot bunnies have laid siege to my brain DX So I've had this idea for a while after having read a load of SI fanfics which sometimes had everything be sad and sometimes had everything be happy. But I noticed that not many of them did a certain thing and because I'm me I had to do it XD ANYHOO~ This fic may have really slow updates because I'm focusing on 'Kyoko' so this is pretty much me just testing the waters for this fic and seeing if anybody likes the idea :)**

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_I fear the end, the end to your life._

_Petals drained of colour, once tall stems stooped._

_My beautiful, once strong flower is in its demise,_

_Disappearing slowly, right before my helpless eyes._

_**Extract from the poem 'Withering Flowers' by Matilda Marozzi**_

* * *

Its weird you know. Dying.

No, that isn't quite the word to describe it. Traumatic and incomprehensible really suits it more.

Imagine this: you are a young woman just shy of twenty-two years.

(Boys, I hope you have an active imagination)

Imagine all the hopes and dreams you have as this woman. You want to become a skilled doctor, travel the world, see the sun rise on New Year's day, eat the most delicious food that has ever existed, learn to cook something that doesn't resemble a pile of ashes and maybe meet _the _one. You're a hopeless romantic, in love with the idea of love and have that peace-keeping nature about you-in your mind everyone just needs to get along and all problems will therefore be solved.

Imagine this woman you now are with all her simplistic emotions that she wears on her sleeve, like how you smile when you see and adorable little dog or how you panic when you realize you've left your wallet at home.

Picture how you grew up with a loving family, your wonderful supportive parents and your brother that really drives you up the wall sometimes but you adore them anyway. Your friends too, foul mouthed, always arguing and laughing at your naive view of the world but your friends all the same.

Imagined that all? Imagined it in such detail that you can see yourself as this woman living her happy little life?

Now forget her.

Rip up every memory you just crafted of her and forget her right now.

Can't do it can you? You can't just forget something just like that. She's still there in your head, smiling at that cute dog and getting more panicked by the minute as she desperately searches for a wallet that isn't in her bag.

But that is what dying is like. You are trying to grasp the last remainders of your life and hang on desperately so it doesn't all go and then...nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

No peaceful light meant to carry you off to heaven or some godlike being telling you its all going to be alright. There is simply nothing. You don't exist either. Your thoughts just cut off, your brain shut down and then its all gone.

Try to comprehend that. Try to comprehend not thinking anymore and being nothing.

Of course, that wasn't really the traumatic and incomprehensible part as I couldn't feel such emotions back then. It was when I woke up that those emotions hit me alongside bewilderment, growing horror and utter terror.

Because you would too if you suddenly became aware after feeling nothing that something strong was gripping you and lifting you up against your will.

Thrashing about frantically, I tried as hard as I could to open my eyes but they felt as if they had been sewn shut and for a god awful moment I thought I had gone blind. Garbled voices washed over me like I was in water and people were yelling above the surface. My mouth flapped open and shut as I took panicked breaths, my heartbeat going so fast it felt physically _painful._

Finally my eyes opened and, although my vision was blurred, I could tell that the blob right in front of my eyes was a gigantic face. I continued to struggle, terrified by how I couldn't get loose. I was then passed over to a blob with another gigantic face as my vision began to focus a bit more.

Now I could see the sweat trickling down the huge face of this woman, her cheeks flushed and her short, hot pants hitting my naked skin. Words spilled out of her mouth I didn't understand and I struggled some more, wanting to scream but unable to because my mouth just wouldn't form the shapes I needed.

Then it hit me.

Gazing down at my naked body covered in this horrible red substance, I took in how my limbs were chubby and that my body overall felt as though it had swollen up, the figure I was used to seeing being gone.

I was a child. A baby. An infant.

This woman was my mother.

I stopped moving. Instead I stared up at my new mother, taking her in with my eyes stretched open as wide as I could make them. A normal baby might have found the soft words she was speaking soothing but I felt myself rejecting her already. _You aren't my mother. You aren't my mother. You aren't my mother._

A hand stroked the back of my head and my mouth opened though the words I wanted to say wouldn't come out, a strange gurgle escaping instead. She looked delighted by this but I ignored her smile, horrified with my earlier thoughts.

_Its not her fault so why must I reject her? I am her child and to reject her is horrible! I can't simply reject her. I can't._

Out of the corner of my eye I then saw a man race into the room. It wasn't a hospital room, I realized, there being no windows and wood paneled walls, light bulbs swinging from the ceiling and only one exit through an old looking door.

Pushing the thought out of my mind, I briefly wondered whether this man was my father and hoped he wasn't too happy because otherwise I would be forced to keep up with this rejoicing mood when I was not at all happy. He yelled something I didn't understand again and suddenly everyone was moving. My new mother half crushed me into her chest as people helped her up, my small fists trying to beat into her skin.

She shouldn't be moving, she just gave birth for crying out loud! What on earth is so important that she has to get up-

Then the screams started.

Instantly I was struggling again, fear suffocating me as more screams erupted into the air, people yelling and scrambling to get back into the room. My mother turned too, almost falling in her hurry to get back.

Bangs then sounded. A heck of a lot of bangs followed by screeches of agony.

My mother turned slightly so that I could see the first group of people to fall, blood spluttering horrifically from their wounds. I didn't scream like I thought I would and break through that barrier that had rendered me unable to communicate. I didn't even thrash about more.

I simply stared.

_They just died. Somebody else just killed them._

Then a bang sounded right up close to me and I was suddenly falling, my mother cushioning my fall with her body just in time but losing my grip on me so I rolled onto the floor that was now red and sticky with blood. As I looked up, more bangs sounded and I watched as something tore through my mother's chest, leaving fabric to tear open and her eyes to open wide.

The eyes never closed. They were stuck like that, never blinking and always watching.

Having been training to be a doctor I knew straight up that she was dead. I had no illusions about this fact. _But I didn't even know her._

More gurgles left my throat and I choked on air, wheezing loudly. The door to the room had been slammed shut and everyone who had ran back in here to try and escape was now trapped, like cornered rats. People were still screaming, trying to hide behind each other or hugging those who had fallen, sobbing.

Eventually a man with a gun settled his gaze on me, the screams of those around me now silenced as I sat there on the floor, not knowing what to do. I was an adult inside this child's body and the doctor inside me was yelling at me to help when I knew it was impossible for me. I couldn't move properly and I was terrified.

A gun was pointed right at my head and I felt that overwhelming horror of knowing I would go back into that nothingness I had decided I hated. Through my blurred vision I could see his finger slowly pressing down on the trigger when somebody let out a strangled yell.

"_Va' all'inferno!"_

The man about to shoot me turned away at the last second and, without knowing I was capable of such survival drove thoughts, I slammed my body into the ground, just missing the bullet fired at me. It stuck fast in the floor just above my head as I lay on my belly, knowing otherwise I would give my breathing away too easily.

I'd understood what the person had yelled though. _Go to hell. _My foul mouthed friends I had known since school had done nothing but say rude words in various languages when we had language class.

_I was in Italy then, _my mind told me calmly even though I was beginning to feel hysterical. Another person then spoke, I assuming it was the man who'd tried to shoot me from how casual he sounded. "Cazzo si."

_Fuck you._

Knowing what would probably happen next, I focused my attention on the bullet in front of me, my blurred vision then catching the sight of a golden symbol I somehow recognized. _Wha-_

"_Vi ucciderò!"_ the guy who had yelled before screamed. "_Vi ucciderò, Vongola!"_

One last gunshot sounded.

The men wielding guns then laughed as I lay there, frozen, begging for them not to hear my panicked breaths or see my slightly shaking form like I expected them to. They never did though.

They simply left.

They killed everyone apart from me and just_ left_.

I lay in that pool of blood for a long time, not caring that I was naked and how hideously painful my fast heartbeat was. Then, when my brain decided that the men had to be properly gone now, I permitted myself to start wailing.

Someone must have heard my sobbing and for a moment I panicked when the door creaked open, thinking I had made a mistake and that the men weren't actually gone. But a woman with flowing, long black hair appeared instead. She saw me amongst the sea of blood and bodies, let out a small cry and ran towards me, scooping me up in her arms. Sobbing into my neck, a stream of fast Italian words hit me, I only understanding a few curses and a name.

_Vongola. Vongola. Vongola. _

The Vongola had killed them all.

* * *

I spent a long time mourning. A whole year in fact.

At first I mourned for my mother-my real mother that I had spent a short lifetime getting attached to, my father, my brother and all of my friends. I then mourned for the family that had been taken away from me before I could properly get to know them.

Part of me tried to be optimistic about the whole situation. _Just think about what would've happened if a normal baby was born. That normal baby would have been severely injured but I survived without more than a scratch._

That part was tiny though, miniscule. The rest of me blamed fate and God and all beings and all things for allowing me to be reborn into a such a hell. I would have honestly preferred that hated nothingness to that bloodbath.

The woman that had taken me away was called Anna. We both lived in this huge house in the middle of a forest along with an old man called Franco. Anna spent most of her time with me, whispering words of comfort and anger. It took that whole year of mourning to get to understand Italian. At first it had frustrated me as I had been unable to communicate and, even when I had managed to form English words, neither Anna nor Franco had understood them. But when I did finally learn to speak, I kept my actual talking to a bare minimum.

The reason for this was that I thought a lot. After having had a whole year of not being able to communicate, I had thought a lot to myself instead. I simply forgot to speak sometimes as a result of this as I was so used to just hearing and answering my own inner thoughts.

In the year I also learnt to despise the Vongola.

I had been born into the KHR world, that I had figured out pretty easily through Anna telling me once about the mafia families in this world, there being the Bovino, the Vongola and the Tomaso families that would have been too coincidental to exist in just a normal world.

Of course, I was conflicted at first. After all, my brain had registered before my death and rebirth that the Vongola were good. That as Timoteo was apparently still in charge of the Vongola he would never order the brutal killing of the small time family I had been born into.

Anna changed my mind though.

I was told everyday that the Vongola were murderers and the Vongola were bloodthirsty animals and the Vongola was the cruelest organization to have ever existed.

After a year of being told that day in and day out, I came to believe her. I came to believe that the seemingly kind hearted Timoteo would order the killing of people who had apparently done no wrong.

I remembered how Tsuna had seen the Vongola killing people when inheriting the power of the Vongola. I remembered how Timoteo had ordered Tsuna to fight and defeat Mukuro when it was likely he would die, Reborn not being allowed to help. And I remembered how people had honestly thought that cruel, cruel Xanxus could be boss of the Vongola, showing how people perceived the Vongola should be run.

In the KHR manga the Vongola was always portrayed in a good light but wasn't that just because Tsuna and Giotto had been good? They had been the only good guys to be running the Vongola, hadn't they?

The others though, Timoteo and Iemitsu included, had been cruel, hideous monsters.

I learnt to hate this world too. I learnt to hate how I had seen horrific sights and I had been denied my right to having a family and how I was now kept hidden from the world lest the Vongola discovered I had lived.

Pretty early on into that year I accepted I had changed from that girl with a smile on her face and a peace-keeping nature.

I was now terrified of leaving the mansion that kept me safe from the rest of this cruel world and wanted people dead.

I despised that most of all. How I had become someone so awful. But it was who I was.

And who was I?

Iris.

Iris Hepburn.

* * *

**So, in case you didn't realize the whole thing I want to go for is the 'antagonist I hate the Vongola' OC insert. Because not enough SI type fics in the KHR section have people who truly despise the Vongola. Originally this OC wasn't going to be Iris but you know.**

**Yolo :D (and I'm like secretly obsessed with her character because I think she's awesome in her own strange little way XD)**

**Did you like it? Did you hate it? Let me know~ :3**


	2. You're Nothing

**I've finally updated after ages of not writing this thing! :D Seriously though, I'm flattered by the response I got after only posting one chapter of this thing. I hope I won't ruin this idea then if it fails haha. I'm sorry for not updating for ages as I had (and still do have) a bit of writers block for this thing so I decided to just write something and see if it could give me any ideas...and it has done (thankfully). **

**This chapter will most likely be re-written too so I can convey the ideas in a less messy way. So please bear with me :) I promise it'll get better but I did want you guys to know I'm still writing this thing so accept this mess (or not idk).**

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_I hate the feeling when you really don't have any emotion. You feel so empty. You're not happy, you're not sad. You're nothing. When your mind is spinning, but you can't feel anything._

_**Unknown**_

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The second year of my new childhood was spent mostly in utter boredom. Of course, I would have liked no better than to use my time learning things and preparing myself for the future but alas my plans were thwarted by the protective-and probably unstable-Anna. It had taken me quite some time to realize how her sanity wasn't quite at normal levels as I had been entirely focused upon my learning of Italian and my growing hatred of the Vongola. When that year of learning had been over I was no longer so occupied and, due to Anna's smothering protection, I was able to properly analyse my guardian.

This idea of me analysing somebody else was testament to how much I had changed in this new world. I was used to a society of people who would not treat or view others as some sort of lab rat and take mental notes on their behavioural patterns. But now I would do so without batting an eyelid. It had even took a while for me to logically reason with myself how strange I should find this.

Anyway, the state of Anna's mind was rather obvious to see when I had turned my complete attention onto her. Whilst before I had got the slight inkling of something being wrong with her I had always put it down to her intense grief at the death of her whole famiglia. When I had started properly listening to her it was clear that Anna was slightly unstable-extremely delusional being the most accurate term for it. She had this strange and passionate belief that she and I could destroy the Vongola. Many a time I pointed out that her ridiculous plans to destroy them would get us killed but she would never take any criticism. Instead she'd go off into her own little world, spouting out stupid plans and blocking out everyone else.

One of her 'brilliant' schemes was that we would pretend to be maids once I had grown up and then, whilst attending to Timoteo, stab him then and there. I had had to try very hard not to laugh at that one. After all, I really doubted that Timoteo would ever go without his guards and that he couldn't take us in a fight, let alone believe we would ever get a job with the Vongola. When it was clear she wouldn't listen to my objections I stopped trying to make her see reason and simply nodded as she explained these plans with feverish excitement.

Anna would get herself killed and that was the simple truth. One day she'd waltz into Vongola territory with this false confidence in her plans and then be hit with the harsh reality of the world not working the way you thought it would.

The idea of her dying didn't affect me as much as I thought it would though. I didn't hate her in the slightest and nor was I indifferent towards her. Instead I did hold this strange sense of affection for the delusional woman, viewing her as some sort of naive child in a way that wouldn't see reason because they couldn't comprehend the idea of being wrong. She was also the one to save me from the bloodbath and take care of me whilst I was stuck in the useless, fragile body on an infant. I was grateful towards her and felt connected to her in a familial way with her being both the younger sister and the mother.

But as an adult mentally I didn't want someone to baby me nor did I want to suffer constant one sided conversations, instead yearning for the intelligent debates I had had in my previous life. Overall, I guess it was simply difficult to develop the deep emotional bond I needed that would make me intensely desire her to stay alive and not just _prefer_ it when I couldn't interact with her like I wanted, only having one-sided conversations about her fixation on revenge on the Vongola.

Not that I didn't hate the Vongola myself. However, I was not so revenge driven that I would succumb to Anna's pitiful plans. They were horrible people and I would very much like them dead but in order to do that I would need power I didn't have. My hatred didn't make me act illogically. I allowed it instead to fester in the back of my mind as I lived my daily life with the intention of letting it loose if I ever did get that power.

And I did want that power. But it would take far more careful planning than Anna, I'm afraid, wasn't capable of.

My hatred of the Vongola was strange however. My initial reasoning as to why I hated them with such burning passion was because they took away my would-be family in such a brutal way right before my eyes, denying me the right to living my life happily (or as happily as I could growing up with the mafia). But, then again, I hadn't really known them had I? And logically speaking, if you didn't know someone it was difficult to feel such intense emotions over their deaths.

As I couldn't think up a real alternative answer to my hatred of the Vongola though, I decided simply to put the blame upon the death of my family. From what I remembered, I had been an extremely emotionally sensitive girl so perhaps it really had hit me that hard.

I considered this all as I stared at my appearance in a mirror. The first time I had seen my reflection I had considered the idea that I was wrong about me being _the _Iris Hepburn because my hair was simply wavy at best, not a mess of curls. Iris's gigantic afro was not natural.

Shock horror.

Most likely Iris had decided at one point that an afro would suit her and thus that led to her looking like she did in the canon. I was somewhat thankful for her afro not being natural because I wanted to look different from her, even if it was just by hair. It made me feel more in control of my actions and that I wasn't just this fictional character in a manga. I was me, even though this 'me' was vastly different to what they had been two years ago.

And having control felt _good_. I had been treated like a child for so long when I had once been an adult who was making decisions for herself. So I had decided that my first goal in this world was to get some control back. That however was most likely to take a few years so me being treated as an infant was likely to continue for some time longer.

Reaching for the drawer beside the mirror I opened it before lifting up the fake bottom and taking out a wad of notes. I hadn't made the fake bottom myself and had simply found it one day when Anna wasn't watching over my every move. Then again, this mansion had presumably belonged to my killed famiglia so it wasn't surprising that it was there.

Presently I had three parts to the notes I had made. The first was information on the canon, the second the information on the canon that was slowly being converted into a code which only I could understand (this usually involving random words and initials referring to each part of the KHR plot) and the third being notes on battle strategies and techniques I was slowly taking whenever I managed to get a book from the library when Anna wasn't looking.

I was keen to get onto the actual fighting techniques but I was too young to actually put them into practice so I settled upon learning them all in theory. Currently I didn't see myself fighting in many fights but in the world of the mafia it was essential I knew how to defend myself. So the notes therefore needed to be made.

Thumbing through them, I settled on re-reading the canon plot one more time to revive my memory-something I did as often as possible lest my notes were accidentally (or intentionally) destroyed. Of course, they weren't exactly detailed because it had taken me a while to write them all out with Anna's constant watching, but it was only the really important plot points that mattered to me as this was my greatest weapon against the Vongola and probably always would be. I could interfere and mess with things whenever I saw it to be beneficial to myself. And it wasn't like they could stop me as they wouldn't even know how I knew their every move. The truth about how I knew it was so bizarre I doubted anyone would ever guess it.

Before I knew it the tell tale creaking of the floorboards outside the room sounded and I stuffed the notes back in the drawer and shoved it closed, smiling at Anna as she entered. There wasn't really any emotion behind that smile though and for a moment I despaired over how our emotional bond wasn't as strong as I might have liked. But the moment did not last long.

Anna smiled back and scooped me up in her arms. She then leant towards my ear. "They're _murderers_."

I immediately blocked her out as she began to whisper words of hate and stupid plans into my ears. _Poor Iris, _was what I thought as she slowly carried me downstairs, a pang of pity rushing through me. _She would have taken in every word this woman has said and then had to see her die a stupid death._

* * *

The third year of my life was much alike to my second. It was dull because of my restricted allowance to do things whilst Anna watched me. But it was at three years old that I found some sense of companionship with Franco, the old man who also lived in the mansion.

He was interesting to me in the sense that he acted exactly like you'd expect an old man to. I had not really paid much attention to this beforehand as I rarely had spent much time with Franco but after spending an afternoon with him one time he had become a thing of fascination.

Initially I had not wanted him to be so, instead having simply desired a somewhat normal-ish person to chat with and bring me back to reality when I spent most of my time around the delusional Anna. However, I seemed unable to bring myself not to analyse him like I did Anna because of their drastic differences in personality. He was soft spoken with a crinkly smile and always happy to talk about anything I wished to. Anna on the other hand would always be very upset or extremely excited and often have one sided conversations with me.

The normal person of the house seemed hardly normal at all to me in this place where Anna was usually the only human I had contact with.

I didn't emotionally connect with Franco either. I found him simply too interesting, too different to properly pour my heart out to him. Instead I was far too busy taking in everything about him and sometimes feeling the spark of recognition from his actions that I would have experienced everyday in my previous life. My conversations with him were infrequent too, which did not help lessen my interest with him and help me to treat him as just a human being, not some sort of thing of wonder.

With my world now being only as big as this mansion and containing only Anna, Franco and me I had lost the chance then to emotionally connect with anyone. It didn't hit me for a while though. I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts to notice my lack of emotional connection to anyone. Too occupied with blocking out Anna's plans. Too interested with Franco's rare 'normality'.

When it hit me that I hadn't had a real conversation about my feelings in forever it wasn't a sense of horror that filled me. Instead it was a realization of 'oh, that was what was missing'. After that I felt the tinge of dread.

I had been such a social butterfly once upon a time. I had been somebody that others had simply gravitated towards because of my honesty and my ability to put my emotions on display for the world to see. But now I was trapped in a tiny world with my emotions only really existing in my head and didn't even _care_ that much.

The thing was that my feelings of horror only lasted for a couple of days. And then it faded away to the back of my mind.

* * *

**Bleh. Bleh. Bleeeeeeeeeeeeh.**

**Sorry if this doesn't make any sense but I literally just had all these ideas be conjured up in my head at once and didn't exactly know how to make them all flow together. I will most definitely be re-writing this as it came out as a jumbled mess but the ideas I wanted to convey I think are all there. **

**And maybe I'm moving super fast with her changes in her character? Then again, for her it's been three years now and I would probably have changed incredibly after just the **_**first**_** year to being someone that was pretty emotional disconnected from others. But it's been three years instead for her and three years **_**is **_**a long time even if I'm not conveying it probably haha.**

**Oh and that bit about her confusion towards why she hates the Vongola isn't something I just put in there that will go nowhere. In fact, most of the things I've written won't just be random ideas that stop with this chapter. But right now it's just in this sorry excuse of a chapter.**

**Again, bleh.**


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